The Space In Between

Chapter Thirty-Four

WE SAT ON the airplane, and I was freaking the hell out as I thought of landing in New York City. I didn’t let Andrea know how worried Kyle actually was in his letters. Something was definitely not right, and I needed to find out what was going on as soon as possible.
“Did you bring sunglasses?”
“No, why?” she asked.
Damn. I knew the paparazzi would be waiting at the airport for photos. Kyle had already set it up for them to get their shots of me returning to the city. He said it may be needed down the line.
As we got off of the plane, I slid on my sunglasses. Andrea looked at me with questioning eyes. I took her hand into mine and rushed her out of the airport. There were a ton of people flashing their cameras in our faces. The look of horror on Andrea’s face made me cringe. I felt awful. I quickly pulled her into a taxi and slammed the door behind us.
“What the hell was that?!” she hollered, looking at me, shocked. My head hung low in embarrassment. I felt terrible.
“Welcome to my life.”
We arrived to the hotel, just to be tackled by more paparazzi there, and I raced her inside before any questions could be asked. As we finally made it to the room, I sighed heavily and fell onto the bed. Andrea stood with her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow.
“Cooper. What’s going on? Why are they following you?”
“Iris and I are filing for divorce. Ya know, they love their drama.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, “Oh my gosh. They are going to think I’m the other woman!”She paused before continuing, “How do you get used to that?”
I took off my shoes as she joined me on the bed. “You don’t.” I needed to warn her if she came across the paparazzi when I wasn’t around. “Andie…those people. They have a way of knowing things about us. Things we don’t know about ourselves. And they lie. It’s their f*cking jobs to lie. Just…don’t feed into any of it if you cross paths with them.” She nodded with understanding, but I knew it wasn’t something she could understand without experiencing it firsthand.
“When do you meet with your manager?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She removed her shoes, and climbed behind me, and started giving me a back massage. My eyes closed with satisfaction as her fingers rubbed me down.
“We should go to a world where there is no drama. No death. No cheating. No divorce. No one else but us. Back to where we started,” she said as she lightly kissed my earlobe. A slight moan escaped my mouth.
“Back to our space in between,” I agreed.
“Back to us.”
I turned towards her and rotated her body on top of mine. I brought her face close to mine and studied her beauty. She wasn’t the same girl I’d met that one Friday night. That girl was hardly there. But today, Andrea was staring back at me, her eyes sparkling. Her light had been found. My lips ran across hers and she slightly parted her mouth, before pulling back. Raising an eyebrow, I asked her what was wrong.
Her blue eyes blinked and I watched them reappear. “I know people have told me that I need time. Time to heal. I need space to find my way. But what they don’t know is I have found my way. I was led to you during my lowest form of Chaos. I found my Order. I found you. Cooper, I love you.”
Our next kiss was the best kiss we had ever shared. It was as if our lips were destined to be together forever and always. I pulled back and smiled towards her. “I love you, too.”
I laid her on the bed and stood over her. She was wearing a light blue button-down shirt and tight blue jeans, f*cking stunning. I started with the top button and worked my way down. She was patiently waiting with her arms to her sides, and I took my time. We weren’t in any hurry. We were going to enjoy this moment together, making love for the first time with one another.
Before when we had sex, it was a way of forgetting. Of getting lost, of letting go of reality, and finding a single moment when we could shut off our brains from overthinking. But now… now we did it for us. Just the two of us. No one else.
I bent down and kissed her stomach with gentle pecks. She lifted my arms and pulled my shirt over my head. Her fingertips ran across my chest as she pulled me closer to her. I began kissing her neck, running my tongue across the same spot, massaging her skin with my mouth, sucking lightly, moving down to her collarbones. I continued to explore her body. She moaned my name, begging for me, but I was the one addicted.
“Cooper…” she sighed as I curved my tongue to outline her bra. Sliding my hand behind her back, I unhooked the bra and slid it off her body. Her breasts were so perfect, and I was happy to glide my mouth over her hardened nipples. Her whimpers pleading for more of me turned me on so f*cking much. She unzipped my jeans and slid them off, allowing her hands to travel into my boxers before she slid them to the ground. For a moment I just lay there.
“Mmm…Andie…” I whispered as my lips explored her breasts a moment longer before I covered her mouth with mine. I kissed her hard, and she kissed back harder. Deeper. She parted my lips and allowed our tongues to get to know one another on a deeper level. I loved her kisses. I loved her so f*cking much.
We didn’t leave the hotel room. We stayed wrapped in each other’s arms. I never could have dreamt of the beautiful moment we had shared with one another. That night, we stayed up, learning more about one another. Finding out more details about our drives in life. Our passions. I asked her everything I could think to ask about her life. And she asked me the same. Her mind brought out the best memories, and she would start laughing as she shared them with me. I wanted to know everything about Andrea Mae Evans, and I was so thankful she took me there.
She didn’t put her clothes back on. Instead she wore one of my white t-shirts that swallowed up her small frame, yet somehow it appeared to be a damned perfect fit in my mind. She picked up my camera and started taking pictures of me. I felt uncomfortable because being behind the camera was where I belonged.
“Tell me what you like about me,” she grinned, holding the camera up and snapping away. I hesitated, rolling my eyes, knowing how this game ended the last time. “Don’t worry. I’m not freaking out this time.” Her smile pulled me in, she looked so sexy in my t-shirt.
My hands wrapped around her waist and I lowered her down to the bed. Straddling her, I smiled, allowing her to keep taking photos of me. Then I took the camera away, sitting it next to us, and stared at her. “Alright…but I’m warning you, if you panic, I’ll hold you down forever.” I cautioned. She smirked wider, wiggling her nose.
“And that’s supposed to be punishment? Come on, we don’t have all night.”
I brushed my fingers up and down her neck, watching her relax into the bed. “I can’t say what I like about you, but I’ll tell you a few things. When you were seven, Eric broke a lamp, but you took the blame for it—afraid that he wouldn’t get to go to his baseball game, where you cheered the loudest. When you were eight, you lost a tooth and buried it in the backyard so a weird creep wouldn’t walk in on you at night.
“When you were thirteen, you cried because you thought someone kidnapped Oscar the cat…Sorry about that one.” Her lips curved up even more, and I felt everything inside of me fall even deeper for her. “And today you’re twenty-two, wearing my t-shirt, your body under mine, looking up at me. And your eyes lock with mine in such a sexy way that it makes me want to rip off your shirt and just lay with you naked. It’s not even that I want to have sex with you. I just want to f*cking lay with you.”
Her eyes started to glass over with water and I shook my head. “So I’m sorry, I can’t say what I like about you. Because it stopped being ‘like’ a long time ago for me. I stopped liking you at age nine and fell in love with you at nine-in-a-half.”
I watched as a small gasp released from her lips. She wrapped her hands around my torso, pulling me down to rest my mouth against hers. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Picking up the camera, I started taking her photos. The light in her eyes right then and there had to be captured. It was the most beautiful thing I’d even witnessed. It was the best feeling, taking her picture; at least I thought that until she started taking photos of the both of us together.
Best f*cking night of my life.